USA Dot Com is a blog covering politics and government from a conservative Christian perspective. Verne Strickland is a 50-year veteran of investigative journalism. This blog offers a take-no-prisoners style with a modicum of biting satire. Verne and his wife of 55 years, Durrene, live in Wilmington, NC.

From behind his desk in Topeka, Kansas secretary of state Kris
Kobach exerts an influence on states’ issues far beyond the borders of
his own.

The Harvard-, Yale- and Oxford-educated lawyer, former
constitutional law professor and ex-chief immigration law adviser to
Attorney General John Ashcroft has now established himself as, in
effect, the “lead attorney” for the increasingly active states’ rights
movement across the country. Both in his capacity as secretary of state
and as a private attorney, Kobach has drawn national notice for
developing strategies, legislation and legal arguments for pushing back
against the federal government on matters ranging from voter
identification to gun rights to immigration.

Kobach, 47, says he is trying to “stand in the gap”
against what he and his supporters see as a growth in federal power and
erosion of states’ rights - an issue he’s been passionate about since
being a law professor starting in 1996.

“You know, 10 years ago, if you gave a talk on states’ rights, people
would fall asleep … but now things have changed,” Kobach said in an
interview.

In fact, in recent years states have been pushing nullification-style bills,
with 20 of them passing laws rejecting some or all of Obamacare and gun
law-nullification bills being introduced in 37 states in 2013 alone.

“It’s a combination of factors,” Kobach continued. “One is the Obama
administration’s assertion of federal power, and then on top of that,
you’ve got these scandals, and there’s several of them, the NSA scandal,
there’s also the abuse of power with regard to the DREAM Act amnesty
which the Obama administration did in violation of federal law. So many
people are looking at the federal government and saying, ‘There’s a real
problem here.’”

Kobach’s work on immigration is well-known: He authored the Arizona
immigration bill that ended up before the Supreme Court, he advised Mitt
Romney’s presidential campaign on immigration, and is credited with
developing the candidate’s much-maligned “self-deportation” position,
and in his work as an attorney he has represented states and cities in
courts across the country on a range of immigration cases.

But Kobach has expanded his portfolio well beyond that. And with his
rising profile, he is drawing increasing criticism. Civil liberties
advocates call his policies dangerous, and some charge he’s been getting
shot down in the courts on case after case.

“He’s always touting how successful he is, but it’s because he’s
distorting his record,” said Gary Brunk, executive director of the ACLU
of Kansas and Western Missouri. “On immigration issues, I think that
clearly his time has passed. … I don’t know how far he’s going to get on
voting issues. In Kansas he’s also jumped on Second Amendment issues.
When people saw that, the reaction among people I’m familiar with was,
‘Well, Kris is jumping on another issue because his old issues are not
working for him anymore.’”

Kobach filed a lawsuit with Arizona in August asking the federal
government to require proof of citizenship on voter registration forms
in Kansas, the first action of its kind after a Supreme Court decision
on voting registration forms last year invited such a lawsuit from
states who wished to require citizenship proof. The move came after he
successfully advocated for tough voter ID laws in Kansas that require
voters registering to prove they are citizens.

Earlier this month, Kobach announced that if the state loses its
lawsuit, it would move ahead with a system that would allow voters who
use the federal form and don’t prove their citizenship to vote only in
federal elections, whereas voters who registered with the state form and
offered proof of citizenship could vote in statewide and local
elections, as well. He said the state is not spending money on
implementing the “contingency plan” because it is confident its lawsuit
will succeed, but if fails, the state would be forced to go ahead.

And Kobach has spearheaded an effort called Interstate Cross Check,
by which states submit their voter rolls to a database that checks for
duplicates and can then follow up to purge ineligible voters from the
rolls. Late last month, Nevada became the 25th state to join on to
Kobach’s effort.

Kobach also helped draft a bill signed into law this summer
nullifying federal gun laws on weapons that never leave Kansas borders,
an effort that was tried with varying levels of success in nearly
three-quarters of states in 2013. He defended the law after Attorney
General Eric Holder wrote the Kansas governor warning it was
unconstitutional, with Kobach saying the law was drafted to withstand
legal challenge and he would “happily meet Mr. Holder in court.”

Kobach, who was born in Wisconsin but moved to Kansas at age 7, lives
in Piper, Kansas, with his family. His wife, Heather, is a former
environmental systems engineer who now has a part-time photography
business in addition to homeschooling their four daughters. Kobach grew
up mostly in Topeka, where is father owned a car dealership.

His allies say Kobach brings a number of qualities that make him a valuable leader on their side.

“He’s clearly one of the brightest people in the room on a number of
these issues — on voting issues and states’ rights issues, he still does
a good bit of work on immigration issues around the country — and he is
exceptionally well thought of intellectually,” said Mississippi
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. “He knows the law, he knows what
the courts are doing and different states are doing: He’s a wealth of
knowledge.”

Kobach is quick to admit that the influence of a university professor
on national politics is limited, while a statewide elected official can
often make a more immediate impact. He says while some of his work fits
with his role of secretary of state, the position also allows him to
advance issues outside of that office’s traditional purview.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Lyon called CNN, “fake news.”

The Muslim world has money, lots of it,
made possible by the technology and development of oil by the West. This
is not new. In the largest transfer of wealth in human history, the
West has underwritten the resurrection of the jihad. The Saudis fund 80%
of the mosques built in America. They buy the publishing companies that
produce our textbooks K- 12. They buy our universities with enormous
grants and endowments.

And they buy our media. The deadliest cut of all.
And what they aren’t buying they are selling: CAIR/ISNA Spokeswoman:
The “media in the US is very gullible…If you have something to say,
especially as a Muslim, they’ll come running to you. Take advantage of
that!”
We see this daily. The stories covered daily here at Atlas and
Jihadwatch, The Religion of Peace.com are not covered in the big media.
The American people are being disarmed in the war against freedom and
individual rights.
CNN is Being Paid By Arabs to Keep Stories Off The Air TMI, October 21, 2013 (thanks to Claud)
Three-time Emmy winning journalist and former CNN reporter Amber Lyon
is blowing the whistle on CNN. She says the network is paid by the
Obama administration and foreign governments to avoid damaging stories
and construct attractive narratives.
Lyon called CNN, “fake news.”
Lyon explained she was part of a four-person team send to Bahrain to
cover the Arab Spring. The colorful footage illustrated the imminent
danger both the team and native activists faced at the hands of radical
Muslims.
But CNN never broadcasted the documentary because the U.S. supported
the Bahrain regime. The Bahrain government also paid CNN not to
broadcast it.
Lyon said, “I saw first-hand that these regime claims were lies, and I
couldn’t believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government
lies into my reporting.”
The journalist discovered her reports weren’t the only ones being
kept off the air by the U.S. and foreign governments. Lyon challenged
the left-wing network when she realized she’d found out such sensitive
information.
Now, Lyon is attempting to get her story to the public.

Two soldiers have been shot and one suspect following a rampage at a Navy base in Millington, Tenn., according to multiple reports.
The U.S. Navy tweeted the following:
#BREAKING: #USNavy can confirm shooting on Navy property; Naval Support Activity Midsouth in #Millington on lock-down.
Moments later, the Navy again tweeted: #USNavy confirms #Millington suspect in custody. 2 Soldiers injured - not life threatening.
The base remains on lockdown as a precaution, Navy officials said.
The Associated Press reported that a Navy recruiter who had been relieved of duty was quickly taken into custody following the shooting.
Naval
Support Activity Mid-South has more than 7,500 military, civilian and
contract personnel working on the base, according to the facility’s
official website.
The facility is home to human
resources operations and serves as headquarters to the Navy Personnel
Command, Navy Recruiting Command, the Navy Manpower Analysis Center and
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Finance Center, the AP reported.
The incident comes less that a month after Aaron Alexis killed 12 in a rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Verne Strickland / Blogmaster / October 24, 2013

Governments
have been confiscating citizens’ savings for decades through deficits,
inflation and outright theft, and it's about to get worse. Bankrupt
governments will do whatever is necessary to survive and feed the
welfare state, and they have never been more bankrupt than they are
right now. Look no further than Poland confiscating half of citizen pensions.
If you knew the government was going to steal your savings from you,
would you do anything differently to protect your savings now? It’s an
important question to think about now, because they ARE coming for your
money, and some newly-discovered facts prove it.

“In
the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings
from confiscation through inflation. Deficit spending is simply a
scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this
insidious process.”-- Alan Greenspan

The Fatter the Government, The Skinnier the People

The
U.S. Debt, not including unfunded liabilities, is over $17 trillion
dollars. The sociopaths who are driving the titanic will be arguing over raising the debt ceiling again.
If we look back to September of 2011, which was the last loud
debt-ceiling argument, gold rose 21% in a period of three months while
politicians caused a major corrosion of confidence in our leaders. When
governments are broke, everything is fair game.

Government
officials are parasites; they don’t produce anything. They only feed
off of those who do. As one person said, the fatter the government, the
skinner the people. And when government officials cannot meet their
obligations or fulfill the promises they made to the public, they’ll
figure out ways to appropriate the public’s money to fund their
projects. Government officials don’t produce wealth; they only
redistribute your wealth. Desperate government officials will always
resort to expropriation, which is outright confiscation.

If
the Federal Reserve is currently buying 90% of the U.S. Treasury market
and they are going insolvent, who do you think the government will lean
on to pick up the slack? The answer is YOU.Ten
thousand Baby Boomers will turn 65 years-old every day until 2030. And
while the government has a debt problem of $17 trillion, not so
coincidentally, our country's IRAs, 401Ks and retirement accounts amount
to that same number: $17 trillion. What a convenient resource for the
Federal Government.

So
here's the plan: The government will nationalize retirement accounts
like IRAs, 401Ks, pensions, 403Bs, etc. so that you will be forced to
use a portion of your retirement wealth to purchase U.S. government debt
– debt that will ultimately default, as it is not possible to sustain
our astronomical debt nor the deficits that create it.

Plan to Nationalize Private 401K and IRA Retirement Accounts

If you do some research on US Bill “HB5337,” you will find the plan to nationalize retirement wealth. On
May 6, 2012 Lauren Schmitz, a research analyst at the Bernard L
Schwartz Center for Economic Analyst (SCEPA), introduced HB5337. This
401(k)/IRA de-privatization is the brainchild of Teresa Ghilarducci,
whom through funding from the White House and the Ford & Rockefeller
Foundations engineered a new “Regulatory & Tax Incentive.” The
purpose is to force Americans to convert their Retirement Accounts into
Government Managed accounts.

This
plan to nationalize private 401K and IRA retirement accounts is being
deceptively publicized as the government protecting the public against
business failings or state bankruptcies. Your cash, your retirement
funds, your bank deposits and your investments are at huge risk of being
confiscated by the government through some contrived reason or another.

The IRS Greases the Wheels of Confiscation

The
IRS is refusing to issue tax ID numbers for single-member LLCs that are
owned by an IRA, which is the specific structure that U.S. taxpayers
create in order to ship their retirement savings overseas. Of
course, the IRS simply decided using its sole discretion to stop
allowing Americans to create this structure, and hence, force them to
keep their retirement savings in the U.S. Without getting into too much
detail on these structures, the bottom line is that the methods by
which you could manage your own IRA and keep it out of the hands of the
too-big-to-fail banks, and thus away from the grabbing hands of
government, are being blocked in an effort to keep all that wealth
accessible to the government.

Many People Have Been Robbed Already

Detroit’s
bankruptcy destroyed many people’s pensions. In Cyprus, the government
raided people’s savings accounts in an example of outright theft. And
right here at home our too-big-to-fail banks, like BofA, Citigroup,
HSBC, Goldman, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and several
others, are right now being investigated for robbing pensions via the
rigging of interest benchmarks, among other investigations of fraud. JP
Morgan Chase, in the last two years, has paid $7 billion dollars in
fines for fraud.

Yet
these parasites remain in power, have had no further regulation placed
upon them, and continue the same (or worse) risk tactics that led to the
financial implosion of 2008 and subsequent taxpayer-funded bailouts.
These criminal organizations look more like organized crime syndicates
than legitimate businesses. Yes, these are the same folks who are in
charge and in possession of your wealth. Whether you have your
retirement funds in a money market, the stock market or the bond (debt)
market, a bank or bank holding company hold and controls your wealth.
This means that when Wall Street, which relies on an incestuous
relationship with the U.S. government, is asked to hand over access to
your money, it’ll be a simple as a keystroke.

The Greatest Heist in Human History

In
1966, before Alan Greenspan became the Federal Reserve Chairman, he
wrote an essay called “Gold and Economic Freedom.” In this essay,
Greenspan explains, the gold standard limited government spending to the
amount of gold held in reserve. However, The gold standard was also
unprofitable to the international bankers and the crooked government
they collude with. So the central bankers, in collusion with devious
government officials, embarked on the greatest heist in human history,
to repeal the gold standard. Stopping at nothing, they attacked and
crucified anyone who opposed them. Eventually, the gold standard was
repealed, the citizens' gold was confiscated, and a debt-based economy
was born.

All
the subsequent government deficit-spending and money-printing that
followed the abandonment of the gold standard led to the Great Wealth
Confiscator: Inflation. Inflation raises the cost of goods, while
reducing purchasing power. And massive money-printing always ends in
hyper-inflation, which typically causes the price of gold and silver to
grow exponentially.

How to Free Yourself from This Monetary Corruption

Create
a gold standard for your own money and take a portion of your wealth
out of the system. One self-directed IRA option that is still within
your total control is the physically-backed gold and silver IRA.
Physical gold and silver in your IRA is held by a private custodian who
is insured by a private insurer and is NOT controlled by the
government. A gold or silver IRA protects your wealth from being
confiscated and also adds a strong measure of inflation-protection.
With a gold or silver IRA, you convert your wealth to the one asset that does not exist in the computer of an insolvent bank or broke government.

There
is a finite window of opportunity to safeguard your wealth, preserve
your freedom, and ensure your family’s future security. And it’s
important to take action now before that window of opportunity closes. (Call 866-682-9821 to receive your free copy of Damon Geller's popular book, "Rescue Your Money from the National Debt Disaster."